


First Kiss

by Brighid



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M, Five Kisses Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 07:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Special. Hell. And killin' dresses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> LJ 5 kisses Thing.

There's a "Five Kisses" thing going around (hopefully mono won't follow!)

Here's my first. It's Firefly, and it's Mal/River.

 

First Kiss

"I want to come, too," River said, standing alongside the mule. 

Mal squinted down at her. "Just a supply pick-up, little girl. It's a nothing town. Five streets and a mercantile and a bar."

"I need things," River replied, grabbing the edge lightly and pulling herself up over the side. "Jayne tore my dress up."

"Da xiang bao zha shi de la du zi!" Mal sputtered, turning in his seat to glower balefully at Jayne, who raised his hands in protest.

"Now, wait just a gorram minute!" Jayne bellowed. "I didn't do any such thing!"

"Did," River said

"Didn't!" Jayne shot back. "Cap'n, I didn't touch this feng le girl's dress. Are you tryin' to get me spaced?" he said furiously, pulling himself up into the backseat alongside her. 

"You cleaned your guns with it," River said placidly, rooting through the back compartment. "You took it out of the wash pile and tore it up." She pulled the goggles loose and then put them on.

"That weren't no dress, that was threads held together by a prayer," Jayne snorted, settling in beside her. 

"It was my dress," River said. "And Simon wants me off the ship. He's having sex with Kaylee."

"Okay, that's enough, right there. One dress it is. You coming, Zoe?" Mal called out. "There's room for one more."

Zoe shook her head. "Seems to me someone oughta stay and watch the ship, Sir." She smiled slightly, but there was still a world of shadows behind it. "But you have fun with the children."

"Hey!" said Mal and Jayne, almost totally in unison.

"I'll try to keep them out of trouble," River said. "But it'll be work."

Zoe winked at her. "Don't I know it."

)0(

Pierson was small indeed, and dusty, too, but there were some good ranches on the outskirts, just starting to thrive, and that meant the mercantile was about three times the size it'd been the last time Mal had been there. The bar was doing a brisk trade, too. They lost Jayne to it after he'd gone through the mercantile and bought a new whetstone, some ammunition and paid for a package of sugar candies to be sent to his mother. 

That left Mal to go over the supply list with Xin Xin Li, the shopkeeper, and then browse the boots while River tried on every dress they had. She flitted out to show Mal each one, twirling so the skirts flared prettily about her legs, showing more than Mal liked. 

It made Mal feel something dirty, actually, as he liked it quite a bit.

It'd been ... a very long time.

And River, who was happy as often as not these days, and who sat quietly beside him on the bridge and listened to him talk and listened to him not talk, was a taking little thing. Sometimes he almost forgot she could smash a man's skull in with her itty-bitty heel.

Almost.

So he just smiled at each dress and agreed it was right pretty, because they all were, and she was too, in the way that wild things were.

"I like this one best," River said, coming up behind him, and it was a lovely dress, dark red with little gold threads picked along the edges, making leaves and vines. She'd caught her hair up, and she looked suddenly older, at least until he looked down at her bare feet. "I can't buy it though," she said, plucking at it sadly. "I can't kill anyone in it. It would tear."

Xin Xin raised his eyebrows a bit at that, but didn't say anything. "Well, darlin', not all of your dresses have to be killin' dresses. You've got some pocket money, why don't you get two?" he suggested. 

River nodded thoughtfully. "Sensible. Only ... you don't always know when you'll need to kill someone. You cannot dress accordingly." She twirled again, and the dress fluttered, clung sweetly to her slight, sweet curves and Mal shut his eyes and heard the Shepherd's voice saying "special hell".

He turned when Xin Xin handed him the bill. Mal went over to the till to settle up while two boys started taking boxes out to the mule. "Your wife's a sweet little thing," he said as Mal handed over the cash money. "Been married long?"

"She ain't ..." but then River was there, holding the red one and a dark blue one, too, and she stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the mouth, wet and sweet and with just a little flicker of her tongue.

"Thank-you," she said, and somehow Mal ended up paying for both the dresses while she drifted out the door.

River was waiting in the mule when he got done, watching the far off scrub hills between her fingers. "It's beautiful here, all air and sky. There are real cows out there. I can hear them," she said happily.

"What in gui was that?" Mal demanded, pulling himself up and in. "And you owe me for two dresses."

"You tasted confused," River says. "You're always thinking-thinking-thinking. It's very tiring. It was a first kiss," she said, and she smiled at him, bright and wide as sunshine. 

Something in Mal crinkled and turned up at the edges at that. "You can't just go kissing grown men, River," he said haltingly. "Not everyone knows to mind themselves, if you get my meaning, and you're a pretty girl and..." River had his gun against his head. "And you can take care of yourself. Right. I remember. Except ... this is different." He tasted her still on his tongue, the sweetness, and thought ... very, very different. And he was so going to ...

"There's no special hell," River said. "And it was just a first kiss." She handed him back his gun.

And Mal thought, a girl's first kiss. Kind of an honour, really. 

River rolled her eyes at him. "Not my first kiss. Ours."

And that was when Mal's 'verse tilted sideways yet again.

)0(


End file.
